


stay awake and stay alive

by cleardishwashers



Category: Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Idiots in Love, M/M, its not actually 2nd person pov i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29377131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleardishwashers/pseuds/cleardishwashers
Summary: This is how it’s gonna go.Your best friend is bleeding. Bad. You are five miles from a hospital. You have a punctured tire and a profound lack of cell service. You are scared out of your damn mind, and all you can think of is the things you didn’t tell him: you had a nice espresso this morning, you think his new stubble would go better with his old haircut, you’re in love with him. And the espresso is just as important as the confession, because you want to tell him everything.title taken from mischief brew's slow death hymn :)
Relationships: Danny Ocean/Rusty Ryan
Comments: 11
Kudos: 28





	stay awake and stay alive

**Author's Note:**

> thank u sean, ao3 user sunshowerst, and the entire oceans discord for being so incredibly cool id die for u all!! im so sorry i keep writing danny getting shot its truly a disease

This is how it’s gonna go.

Your best friend is bleeding. Bad. You are five miles from a hospital. You have a punctured tire and a profound lack of cell service. You are scared out of your damn mind, and all you can think of is the things you didn’t tell him: you had a nice espresso this morning, you think his new stubble would go better with his old haircut, you’re in love with him. And the espresso is just as important as the confession, because you want to tell him everything.

“You’re not dying,” Rusty declares, hands steadier than his voice. Which isn’t saying much, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. “You’re not dying, I’m telling you.”

“That’s the spirit,” Danny says, from where he’s collapsed on the floor.

“You’re not dying in that suit, and you’re not dying in this stupid warehouse. That—” Rusty bends down and pulls Danny up, pretending not to hear the groan or feel the blood, arranging Danny’s arm so that it’s slung across his shoulders— “would be cliche.”

_ The last thing you’re gonna say to your best friend is that he’s cliche, and you can’t even find the decency to say it in a voice that doesn’t waver. _

“What, dying in a ware—” Then comes a coughing fit that Rusty firmly ignores, as they stagger out the door of the warehouse into the dark night. The road is packed dirt, and Danny’s feet scrape along like nails on a chalkboard. “Shit,” Danny mutters.

“That’s my line,” Rusty replies, still sounding like a fucking 80s starlet trying to cry-but-not-really in front of the cameras. Something smells, smells like iron and pine and too-strong cologne. Just fifty more feet to the car. “And also, you’re dressed in a tuxedo. That’s the intro to every B-list horror movie ever made.”

For a second, the only sound Rusty hears is crickets, echoing off the trees and amplifying each other and vibrating through his skull; the panic he feels in that moment is white-hot and blinding, so intense he nearly stumbles. But then Danny’s replying, “Remind me to cancel the Netflix subscription,” and the relief is so strong that Rusty really does trip. “Ow,” Danny groans.

“Shut up,” Rusty says, a note of hysterical laughter in his voice, as if it had come from lungs filled with soil that’s slightly  _ my-partner-might-be-dying _ acidic.

_ And that’s another thing you didn’t tell him. That you’re sorry for jostling his bullet wound on the way to the car. And you’re thinking about it like you’re a fucking sommelier. _

“You’re very rude when you’re stressed,” Danny says. Rusty wrenches open the side door instead of saying something stupid like  _ I’m not stressed _ or  _ Did you get your espresso from the hotel this morning _ or  _ I’ve been in love with you for twenty years, I think. _ The car smells like sweat and leftover fries, and Danny tumbles ass-first onto the leather bench seat. “Real Cinderella story,” he says, words still whiskey-smooth, even as his fingers tremble. Rusty’s gonna blow this car up when they’re done, because he’s never gonna be able to look at the passenger door without remembering a pale hand gripping the handle.

He slides across the hood and starts the engine, the familiar  _ clunk-clunk-clunk _ almost comforting. The steering wheel is unmoving under his white-knuckled grip. The left rear tire hisses as he whips the car around. The upholstery on Danny’s side of the car bears its growing red stain, like Christ's cross, and does not complain.

Danny, on the other hand, bitches for the first three miles. And then he stops bitching, and Rusty kicks it up to 70 instead of doing 40 like a law-abiding citizen should. Well, there’s no citizens, law-abiding or not, in this neck of the woods, or else there’d be a fucking cell tower.

The car skids into the emergency bay. Danny is wheeled away on a gurney. Rusty stands in the parking lot, under the neon red cross, staring at a flyer of a prostitute taped to a telephone pole.

Someone comes to get him— later, when he’s switched from staring at the flyer to staring at the flickering soda machine. (He’d figured that Cherri So-Dalicious had better things to do than be an unwilling priest in his sodium-streetlamp confessional.) He’s then brought inside, like a stray dog saved from the rain, and introduced to a doctor. She says things like  _ factor seven _ and  _ liver damage _ and  _ constant observation, _ but Rusty hasn’t been paying attention since he first saw her face and figured that hey, he’s okay. She’s lucky he’s got a professional need for patience, because otherwise he’d’ve burst into Danny’s room the second he knew it was kosher. She says the magic words—  _ you can see him now— _ and he does it anyways.

Danny, even sleeping peacefully, looks like shit. Charcoal circles under the eyes, skin paler than Linus in winter, lines creased deep into waxy skin.

Rusty sits next to Danny until he wakes up, and then tells him as such. “Real nice,” Danny says, grinning the grin he only gives to Rusty— gums showing, left side pulled higher up than the right, imperfect and almost always paired with a shitty one-liner.

_ Your best friend isn’t gonna die. And you’re still in love with him. _

The only thing Rusty can think to say is: “Did you try the espressos at the hotel?”

Two minutes later: “You should grow out your hair again.”

And two days after that, when Danny’s been discharged and Rusty’s pushing him out to the (new, stolen) car in a wheelchair from 1986: “Y’know, you remember when we won that poker game in Atlantic City?”

“Yeah?”

“Pretty sure I’ve been in love with you since then.”

There’s a brief pause.

“Danny. Say something.”

“I’ve got you beat, I think,” Danny replies. “Newark.”

“Newark in May or Newark in October?”

“…Fuck.”

This is how it’s gonna go.

Your best friend has been in love with you for the past twenty years. You have been in love with him for six days longer than that. You are both capable of conning yourself out of this fact (which you did, for eighteen years, like playing three-card Monte without knowing that a good dealer hides the queen). You are probably the happiest you’ve been, even though you’re basically doing the exact same thing as usual: you’re sharing coffee in the mornings, you’re pretending not to see him steal your hair gel, you’re telling him you love him through the little gestures (with the fun addendum of saying it, y’know, out loud). And the coffee is just as important as the confession(s), because you’re telling him everything; for real, this time.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! hmu on tumblr at hawkswithvideocameras, and feel free to leave a kudos/comment! have a great day :)


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